Van Tromp and De Ruyter
A generation ago a little clique of wise men at Oxford patted themselves on the back for having discovered “The Historical Method.” But the common people of all countries have always known it. The names of the great dead are not forgotten, nor yet the great things for which they stood. There may be no strict liturgy for the ancestor worship of the West, but that worship is a simple fact, and it is a thing that timorous politicians would do well to remember. Here Raemaekers appeals to his countrymen to regard their past, to be worthy of the great seamen who took the Dutch Fleet up the Medway, and lashed brooms to the mast-head of the ships that swept the sea clear of British enemies.
The Dutch were fighting for their liberty then. Great Britain is fighting for liberty in Europe to-day—and for Dutch liberty to boot. The enemy of all liberty uses Holland as a short cut whereby her pirates of the air can get more quickly to their murder work in England. Would the hero ancestors, of whom the Dutch so boast, have tolerated this indignity? The artist seer supplies the answer.
Note the mixture of the ghostly and the real in this vivid and vivacious drawing. But if it is easy to see through the faint outlines of the sailor spirits, it is easier for these gallant ghosts to see through the unrealities of their descendants’ fears and hesitations. The anger of the heroes is plainly too great for words. How compressed the lips! How tense the attitude! The hands gripped in the angriest sort of impatience! Mark the subtle mingling of seaman and burgher in the poise and figures. Mark particularly van Tromp’s stiffened forefinger on his staff.
Is the fate of L19 the fruit of our artist’s stinging reminder that Holland once had nobler spirits and braver days?
ARTHUR POLLEN
VAN TROMP AND DE RUYTER
“So long as you permit Zeppelins to cross our land you surely should cease to boast of our deeds.”
Whenever a Dutchman wishes to speak of the great past of his country he calls to mind the names of these heroes.